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Book Review: STATELY HOMICIDE (1953) by George Milner

8/6/2021

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John Curran reports in The Hooded Gunman: an Illustrated History of Collins Crime Club that George Hardinge was an editor for the series, working at Collins in the 1950s and into the ‘60s. Using the pseudonym George Milner, Hardinge would publish six crime novels in his lifetime; 1953’s Stately Homicide is the first, and introduces private detective Ronald Anglesea, a character who only appears here and in the following year’s Shark among Herrings. The three Milner books I have read to date – the late novel A Bloody Scandal (1985) is the third, and that is a reworking of his earlier suspense story A Leave-taking (1966) – are readable and sporadically clever, although they are occasionally a lumpy mix of strengths and weaknesses.
 
In Stately Homicide, Anglesea is called to Tranby Castle by the Marchioness and asked to discover who was responsible for sending a telegram with deadly mechanical directions to Sir Richard’s racing team at the Barcelona Grand Prix. Before he can solve that mystery, a more immediate tragedy occurs: Lady Tranby is found dead in her bedroom, impaled by a family sword with the phrase Vengeance Is Mine written in lipstick on the wall. The detective believes that the victim’s husband, Henry, and family members Peter, Anne, and Jimmy all know more than they are willing to confess, and it is this knowledge that allows the pressure to build to a climax where another life is very nearly be taken.
 
For a mystery series editor, the author seems to struggle here with pacing; plotting is on stronger ground and the murder, occurring a third of the way through the story, at least offers a memorable visual tableau. But the plot within the first 60 pages of Stately Homicide meanders more than it should. We are introduced to the characters who will become the murder suspects, but they don’t really achieve definition (or interest) until that crime occurs. Milner’s prose may be humorous and gently satirical, but the book feels padded. I could have done without, for example, a quartet of doggerel verses Anglesea delivers to celebrate his love interest’s toes as she sways barefooted in a hammock. Other narrative digressions are more welcome, as when the author winks at the archetypes found within the mystery fiction genre:

It is a constant wonder to me how private detection survives as a profession. Some faint anomaly, discrepancy or suspicion may lead to the employment of a private detective and – Bang! Within the hour one of the employer’s nearest and dearest has gone to join his Maker in circumstances which are freakish, grotesque, bloody and much-publicised. As the sack of the city follows the admission of a spy, to employ a private detective is to invite sudden death. I was once commissioned to check a clause relating to jewellery in a marriage settlement, and I hadn’t even unfolded the document before the sound of gunfire broke out all over the house. A detective is a catalyst.
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There is an amusing creation, Inspector Hammer of the Yard, who steals his scenes with his blunt barrage of questions during suspect interviews and his certainty of the scenario until the amateur sleuth Anglesea prods him in another direction. The solution is engaging but one of those that requires a few people involved to make some rather unbelievable choices due to their definitions of honor and virtue.

​Still, it is arguably fair-play, with snippets of overheard dinner conversation, some persistent lawn maintenance, and a reference to “The Duchess of Kingston” enough for Ronald Anglesea to penetrate the family secret. Manor house parties certainly appealed to the author; this book and the next one let Milner’s detective play the outsider, moving among the aristocracy and enjoying his host’s hospitality while he dissects the dysfunction he finds among the many rooms of these stately homes. 

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Book Review: A BLOODY SCANDAL (1985) by George Milner

8/30/2016

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This late entry by occasional crime novelist George Milner has an amoral Royal Navy man as its antihero protagonist, as well as a gleefully nihilistic – and sometimes misogynist – tone. It is also likely a partial reworking of the author’s 1966 novel A Leave-Taking, which I recently received and which, upon perusal, appears to share the main character, the intention to commit murder while fly-fishing in Scotland, and this quotation from The Master of Ballantrae: “I am a pretty bad fellow at bottom, and I find the pretence of virtue very irksome.” Despite – or, more accurately, because of – the book’s capriciously cruel characters, plot, and tone, A Bloody Scandal was for me a worthwhile, even thought-provoking tale.

At center is Rear Admiral Peter Farquarson, who has returned from a gun battle in the South China Sea that managed to resolve in a way that left him a naval and national hero. The bureaucratic interviews and official red tape bore Farquarson to pieces, and he soon begins to think about how he can chase the enormous inheritance of his brother’s ex-wife (from her side of the family; Farquarson’s brother Colin has wasted the family fortune) and set himself up for a comfortable retirement. As the legacy is entailed in a way that connects it to the three Morrison daughters, and finally to their only offspring, Emily’s daughter Victoria, the navy hero decides to marry one and eliminate the rest.

Thus begins Farquarson’s quest, and to that end this slim book (at less than 200 pages) is expertly paced. There is nothing better than an active protagonist boldly reaching for his goal, and while the character is bluntly charming, he is also reckless in his parries, relying more on luck and bravado than any reasonable premeditated murderer might. And believably, Farquarson’s luck holds. He hires an ex-SAS mercenary named Silver – ironically, through Colin, who will become an early victim – to help him with his scheme, and manages to get away with much of it despite strategies that are more often full-blown assaults: arson, car bombs and poison-tipped umbrella points are not exactly subtle, nor do they present the appearance of anything other than murder to the police.

The police, it is amusing to note, take the form of Vraismouth and Toothboy, two detectives from different districts who confer on the sequence that has given them each a victim or two. While discussing events over drinks – always over drinks – Toothboy believes Farquarson is behind the killings, but Vraismouth is skeptical and uninterested in acquiring more work. Besides, argues Vraismouth, would the man be so brazen to leave Mars bar wrappers scattered about the crime scene and risk being seen in a ludicrous fake disguise? Better to leave it alone.

A Bloody Scandal may be most intriguing to me for its cynicism about society’s positive qualities: notably, Milner argues that society doesn’t really have any. No character in this book is in love with another, and sexual couplings are always undertaken for a particular gain. Farquarson’s plan is cold and remorseless, but so are the personalities of most of his victims. This would make for a dispiriting read except for Milner’s constant winking that this world has its priorities profoundly off-balance: bloody murder sells papers and encourages gossip, but the scandal of the title refers to an ungentlemanly gambit Farquarson makes while playing bridge at a club, much to the anger of his opponent at the table.


Our anti-hero also shocks his well-heeled audience at a speaking event when he uses his speech to talk not about his sea battle but of the statistics to calculate the average number of women a man will sleep with during a lifetime. The speech scandalizes everyone and, of course, makes him a highly coveted dinner guest. The hypocrisy of society’s public attitudes and private appetites is apparent throughout: people marry for money but engage in adulterous flings; government departments appoint or ignore war heroes as it suits them; card playing carries greater value than human life. In a reality like that, Farquarson’s amorality seems almost reasonable, and perhaps the only way to succeed.

Interestingly, Kirkus Reviews found the book “uninspiring” and a “mini-entertainment at best.” The reviewer states that the anecdotes – which I believe illustrate Farquarson’s naughty-child defiance of the prudish societal rules that he can’t stand – are merely “diversions and digressions.” (He or she also calls Milner a “first-novelist,” which he decidedly is not.) While not for all tastes, A Bloody Scandal is a happily venomous little story, and its author has managed to use that contradictory tone and his anarchist protagonist to say something quite valid about the hypocrisy of British society.


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Book Review: SHARK AMONG HERRINGS (1954) by George Milner

8/6/2016

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For this American, English manor house gatherings in fiction have always held a curious appeal, along with an acute awareness of the strain and strangeness that such artificial living conditions must produce. Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse would assemble their cast of characters for a fortnight of garden walking and relationship testing and dressing for a multi-course dinner (attended by servants, naturally). The setting is especially attractive for Golden Age mystery writers because built into the country manor house locale is the opportunity for a finite but varied group of suspects to, through propinquity and purpose, stay in one spot until the crime is solved and the loose ends are tied up.

It’s a way of living that is both exotic and stifling when I consider it today; I’m not sure I could manage several consecutive days surrounded by the same people – many of them relatives – with no goal defined and nothing really to do. The closest analogy for me appears to be the notion of a vacation or holiday, but to realize that English house parties of yesteryear could last weeks and stretch a season, with the house owners acting as interminably obliging and inescapable hosts, the prospect loses some of its romance.

In George Milner’s hybrid mystery Shark among Herrings, Jupiter Insurance Company investigator Ronald Anglesea crashes the desultory country house party of Sidney Manders. Ronald manages to sneak his attractive Girl Friday, Diane, into the group after a few evenings, and together the two learn the circumstances that resulted in the disappearance of Pamela Manders’ valuable rubies. Also staying at the house are two alleged newlyweds, Stephen and Julia Ravensdale – “alleged” as there have been reports of a matching pair of thieves who answer to much the same description – and James Chudleigh, a blustery Scot with a stutter. While James claims to be a copy-writer, he is evasive about exactly what his connection to the host might be.

The communal living begins to wear on the nerves of the guests, and soon the missing jewels are the least of the group’s concerns. Ronald uncovers several small-scale but vindictive blackmail schemes from an unknown source, and Sidney’s son Trevor is still away from the house, although no belongings were taken and Trevor’s disappearance occurred the same night the rubies went missing. While Sidney believes his son had left to prove himself in life, Ronald suspects that the young man may have met a more sinister fate. Added to this is an escalating and ugly battle between John Cross-Rivett and Smash Mainwaring, his insufferable nephew. When John’s rifle is sabotaged with smoke cartridges, the angry hunter thrashes the young man, with Pamela offering encouragement. The next shooting party almost proves deadly, however, as a switched cartridge of a different caliber results in Cross-Rivett’s gun exploding in his face.

From there it seems like bloodshed is inevitable. Smash has become obsessed with anchoring a dinghy at a particular spot on the private loch – is Trevor Manders’ body hidden below? – and launching toy boats on the water. The hobby is ill-chosen: while nearly everyone from the house explores the lake’s floor using diving helmets, a hand rises from the water to stab Smash in the back as he leans over the dinghy’s edge. Detective-Inspector McCulloch investigates, sending divers in, but the knife is not under water and no one had a way of concealing a weapon in a bathing suit. A car chase, a late-night hallway stakeout, and a final rendez-vous at the loch help Ronald Anglesea solve the mystery of the rubies and unmask an unbalanced killer.

Shark among Herrings is Milner’s second (and final) Anglesea novel; the first was 1953’s Stately Homicide.  It’s also the first book by this author I have read, choosing it for the website Past Offences’ Crimes of the Century, a wonderful reader challenge that suggests a new publishing year to reviewers each month. 1954’s Herrings is a highly entertaining read, although its mix of genre styles may prove an obstacle for classic mystery purists. While one half of the book is firmly rooted in Golden Age detective premise and puzzle play, one quarter also delivers some elements usually associated with American hard-boiled fiction: the wise-cracking and solitary detective, the beautiful assistant, described here as “a platinum blonde whose swathes of heavy hair fall straight round her head and droop (by careful arrangement) over one blue eye,” the outbreaks of action and danger. There’s also a thread of criminal psychology and “mania” woven into the plotline, and Milner provides some effectively vivid but far-from-cosy descriptions of violence:

Smash lay dead enough, drooped over the bows, the blood which stained the back of his shapeless tweed jacket already beginning to look a dirty brown in the still bright sunlight. Blood dripped, too, from his mouth, and splashed in sticky drops into the cold, crystal water; each drop spread into red, stringy lines in the sunlit water, then was dissipated like a melting jellyfish.
Such descriptions are rare, though, and the story’s comic tone, steady pace, and genuine cleverness (in method if not necessarily in motive) should appeal to whodunit fans. Milner makes the misstep, in my opinion, of giving his detective a very questionable idée fixe, assuming that Trevor Manders’ absence must equate to murder, and the reader in turn becomes suspicious of Anglesea’s other theories. The sleuth and his author do acquit themselves admirably by the final chapter, and viewing the plotline in retrospect, Milner has crafted a clearly constructed fair-play puzzle. As the author was an officer and submarine-man who served the British Navy during World War II, he doubtless had knowledge of the diving helmets and air tanks that did not need accompanying wetsuits for the swimmers, which the characters use here to support the plot. (I had not heard of a helmet-only option.)

In Shark among Herrings, the shooting is sabotaged, the waters are deadly, and familiarity moves past contempt to incite bloody murder. Which is one more reason why I will think twice if I’m ever invited to an extended country house party.  
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